I can offer an instantly effective alternative to "someone needs to supervise the social network," stop using it. The terrible tyranny of facebook has to be the epitome of first world problems.<p>Why are your kids there? In your own words, it's a professional risk, den of commercialism, not to mention the inevitable psychological damage from refreshing a webpage instead of having actual social interactions. And it's not even hip any more.
Question:<p>IANAL but isn't it illegal (grounds for a lawsuit at least) to use the image of someone, who is too young to provide legal consent, in an advertisement without their legal guardian's express written consent?<p>I could have swore that was a thing on a higher than state level but maybe I'm wrong? Like I didn't think you could make a 'settlement' and then legally avoid this sort of thing in the future.<p>Isn't this quote all sorts of legally indefensible? When did non-adults ever have the ability to 'represent' anything in the absence of their guardian?<p><i>any user under 18 “represents” that her parent agrees to let Facebook use her image in ads.</i>
This article reaks of helicopter parenting, with all the usual over-blown statements that make talking about targeted advertising so hard to explain:<p>> Facebook can’t buy our children, and it can’t sell them either.<p>Yes, slavery, because that’s exactly what’s at stake…<p>> But 10-year-olds still need supervision.<p>Not sure I need to point out that they have nothing to do on Facebook in the first place, or that humanising young corporation in a way to disparage the ability of their (very mature) executives to make decisions is lame. You are not Mark Zuckerberg’s, or Sheryl Sandberg’s mother — stop thinking that because you are someone’s mother, you are always right on all matters; otherwise, I'll have to point you to how the authors’ of Freakonomics have truckloads (litterally) of hatemail proving that being a parent… doesn’t exactly make you reasonable in general.<p>I'll pass the “my child is so smart” because… well, with a mother like you, I can only hope that she is, and focus on a simple thing: someone as opinionated as a hippie teenager can be probably never ‘Liked’ big corporate brand on Facebook, yet, they are apparently listed as such.<p>That is a purely technical problem, that has nothing to do with parental consent and kids’ agency, about how much control Facebook users have over their listed ‘Likes’. I wouldn’t sue Facebook, because, well, they have good lawyers and your narrow-minded hysterionics and over-helicoptering seems to have ruined the patience of every judge available. I’d go with the announcers, telling them that they are advertising to the wrong crowds because of technical glitches. But that's just me.
When you "like" something you are telling Facebook that you want your social network to know that you like that thing. Doesn't it make sense that Facebook would then go about telling people that you said you liked it? That's the whole point of clicking the like button.
> A generation of ‘opt-in’ kids is being exploited, and someone needs to supervise the social network<p>I'll happily bash facebook all day. But before you allow your children onto the Internet you really really need to decide about what you think is acceptable, and talk to them about it.<p>Do not arrange to meet in real life anyone you do not know in real life without talking to me first; do not take photographs of your unclothed body and for god's sake do not send those photographs to people.
"the global supply chain that exploits workers" can we please stop perpetuating that ridiculous myth, in the countries in which sweat shops exist, they are generally far better options for laborers than the alternatives.
Why do you care? So what if your face is on an ad? Only idiots would believe you had anything to do with that happening, and why would you care what idiots think?
Maybe the law isn't the most important thing here. I think that Facebook has to act like a grown up and think in an ethical way about this. It's just immoral to use children their images in adds. And I don't think that this fits Zuckerbergs original intentions when he started Facebook.